The nerdiest thing our Matt Buchanan ever wanted was an awesome powerline router. I'll see your nerdiness, Matt, and raise you one. Hy-Fi Routers crossbreed Wi-Fi, ethernet, powerline, and MoCA to give you a mutant baby of ultimate internet reliability. The dream of consistently fast 100Mbps internet all over my apartment is so close I can almost taste it.

Wi-Fi sucks. Well, it sucks if your router is lurking in a subterranean realm of your apartment and …
Read more Read more

Hy-Fi is basically a hybrid of all the different ways we connect to the internet at home. Wi-Fi and ethernet you probably know. Powerline transmits data through the electrical wiring already in your house—yes, those standard electrical outlets—so it essentially give you your own isolated, wired home network. Hy-Fi can use all of those together to give you a super reliable data-stream. If your wi-fi suddenly sucks (like it does sometimes) it'll adapt to pull more from powerline. If powerline is spread too thin, it'll take more from wi-fi or ethernet. You'll never know it's doing all of this. All you know is that is that movie you're streaming is playing just like it should.

Hy-Fi (not to by confused with Hyphy) is starting to gain ground, thanks to a new standard that was recently blessed by the IEEE. The standard aims to ensure that your Hy-Fi devices will play nicely together regardless of brand, etc. Qualcomm Atheros has been one of the companies working hard at developing this newer technology, and their new QCA6410 chip should make powerline/Hy-Fi gear smaller, cheaper, and better. I stopped by the Qualcomm Atheros booth at CES to see this gear in action, and it did something extremely surprising: it made me legitimately excited about home networking.

Watching the software in action was like seeing a symphony being conducted by a robot. The demo was pulling four separate video streams at once using a Hy-Fi router with Qualcomm guts. The information could be coming through Wi-Fi, ethernet, and powerline all at once, though they only had Wi-Fi and powerline set up for the demo. They would introduce interference, but data rates instantly adjusted, and performance remained consistent. Soon Qualcomm chips will also be incorporating MoCA (MoCA (multimedia over Coax Alliance, which is pretty much same thing as powerline, but with the coaxial cable you already have in your walls).

My TV is on the far side of my apartment from the office where my router lives. When Netflix streaming craps out on me, I curse TimeWarner. But often if I go closer to the router, it turns out I was just having Wi-Fi problems. I want those days to be behind me, now. Qualcomm is updating all of its new and existing Hy-Fi devices to the new standard this quarter, and others will be hot on their heels. Hopefully more and more devices will be made with this this in mind. And yes, I recognize that I am a total and complete geek right now. I've made my peace with that, but please don't pants me. [Qualcomm Atheros]